PrayerLeader OnLine interviews Dr. Daniel Crawford, the Chair of Prayer at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of three books on prayer.

Dan, as Chair of Prayer at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, your position is rare at the seminary level. How vital is it for future pastors and church leaders to have at least one course on prayer and why are so few offered across North America?
I think it is absolutely essential that future pastors, chaplains, counselors, church staff members, and missionaries have a course on prayer at the seminary level. We can no longer assume that a student arrives at a seminary with all the tools and disciplines needed for ministry. In fact, many incoming seminarians are fairly new believers. To graduate a student without offering him or her a course on prayer is as unthinkable to me as sending a graduate to pastor a church without a preaching course, or to be a counselor without a course in counseling.

As to why so few seminaries offer a course on prayer, I would offer two major reasons. First, it is because we assume students already have that discipline worked into their lives. Some do. Many do not. Second, prayer is not considered by many academicians as an academic discipline. After all, it is not a classical discipline such as Greek or Systematic Theology or Philosophy of Religion. In most seminaries, the classical out votes the practical on almost every issue of curriculum.
 

The basic thesis of this book is that the prayer-shaped disciple prays "with," "through," and "beyond." How does this template help us understand our spiritual walk, especially as it relates to prayer?
Walking begins with small steps and a few stumbles. Few learn to walk without a support system. In considering the idea of “with” the book explores our heavenly prayer partners as well as out human prayer partners. I’ve lost count of the books on prayer that, either in the title or subtitle, refer to prayer as talking “to” God. It is, but that is only part of the communication. Effective communication is always two-way. So, I try to establish early in the book, the value of “with” in prayer. Having defined prayer as “two-way communication” the book then takes the reader “through” the six classical communication questions: who, what, where, when, why and how. Finally, the book focuses on the “beyond” as we pray for the church and the world and as we experience spiritual warfare, which we inevitably do when prayer is practiced faithfully.

Your second book One Anothering: Praying through Challenges Together was born out of a tragic event.
On September 15, 1999, a lone gunman walked into our church, Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. He was carrying two guns, 200 rounds of ammunition and a home-made pipe bomb. Inside the worship center were approximately 1,000 teenagers and their sponsors participating in a post See-You-At-the-Poll rally. Since it was Wednesday evening, there were another 500 or so people scattered around the church campus in other meetings. In 12 minutes, the gunman took seven lives, seriously injured seven others, took his own life and traumatized hundreds, including member of my own family. Within a few weeks there were nine people planning on writing a book on the shooting. That’s when the church authorized me to write the “official” book on the shooting and its aftermath. I wrote, Night of Tragedy, Dawning of Light: The Wedgwood Baptist Shootings.

Because I had written the first book, it was decided that a follow-up book was needed. In addition to the mighty activity of prayer, one of the things that assisted the church in its journey through this tragedy was a series of sermons preached by Pastor Al Meredith on the “one anothers” of the New Testament. On the fifth anniversary of the shooting, the One Anothering book, co-authored by Al and myself, was released.
 
The book does more than tell the story of the shootings, it becomes a prayer guide. Somehow you connect the tragedy, the one-another commands of the New Testament, and intercession. How do they relate to the outward aspect of praying for others?

At the same time as Al was preaching his sermon series, I was serving as interim pastor of a nearby church that was going through a crisis of a different nature. I too, preached a series of sermons on the 31 different New Testament uses of the Greek word, allelon--most often translated, one another. As Dr. Meredith and I talked on one occasion we hit upon the idea that one way to implement the James 5:16 idea of “pray for one another” was to pray the one anothers for one another. We developed a 31-day prayer guide, during which a person could pray all 31 uses of the Greek word, allelon--pray that we would love one another, pray that we would serve one another, pray that we would honor one another, etc. Both churches began to do this with great success. The 31-day prayer guide, became the book, One Anothering: Praying through Challenges Together.

Your third book is entitled Prayerwalking: A Journey of Faith. What role does prayerwalking play in the forward focus of the church?
First let me say that prayerwalking is not a final, great method for the church. It is a method of the biblical principle of intercession. Repeatedly the Bible instructs and models intercessory prayer--prayer for others. In fact, approximately two-thirds of the prayers in the Bible where we see an answer given, are intercessory prayers. One may pray in a prayer room with eyes closed, head bowed, and knees bent or one may pray on one’s feet with eyes open and all senses alert. Neither is better than the other. Both are effective methods of intercession.

Having now prayerwalked in more than 55 countries of the world, I see one of the things that makes prayerwalking a forward focus of the church is that it opens our eyes to real need. Having prayed on site, I never pray the same way again for that situation. For me, it is just not the same as reading or hearing a prayer request and bowing my head in prayer. In the past 20 years, God has chosen to use prayerwalking in a mighty way around the world. Most missionaries with whom I relate, tell me that prayerwalking is their number one strategy. Let me quickly remind us that when we talk with God about people, we are invariably led to talk with people about God. In other words, prayerwalking is not a substitute for evangelism or mission. It is a means to it.

You define prayerwalking as: "Intercession, on location, with information, in cooperation, against opposition, for glorification." Why are each of these elements essential for prayerwalkers?
The definition was born out of a three-week prayer journey around the world. In fact, the book is co-authored by another member of that prayer journey team, Calvin Miller. The book is instruction on prayerwalking, followed by a chronicle of that three-week prayer journey.

• Intercession--As stated earlier, it is a biblical priority. While the word, “prayerwalking” is not in the Bible and it is debatable whether anyone in the Bible actually prayerwalked as we define it, it is a fact that intercession is biblical. And prayerwalking is an effective method of the biblical principle of intercession. We should not worry about the absence of “prayerwalking” in the Bible. Neither does the Bible instruct us to close our eyes, yet this remains an effective method of the biblical principle of prayer. Many modern methods do not have a chapter and verse reference in the Bible. That which we must have for any ministry method is a solid biblical principle. That is why I call prayerwalking a method of the biblical principle of intercession.
• On location--Praying on location is biblical. Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus to pray. Jesus sent His disciples to pray on location. Is praying on location more effective than praying at home? Not necessarily. It is just another way God uses to communicate with us. For me, at lease, praying on location has profoundly enhanced my prayer life.
• With information--Here is one of the real values of prayerwalking--as we prepare and as we walk, we learn new information about the people and the place of our praying, information that we might never have obtained if confined to a prayer room or a prayer closet.
• In cooperation--We pray in cooperation with prayerwalking partners, with local believers and church leaders, with prayer partners who are not on the scene. One group calls this face-to-face prayer. Another group calls it mouth-to-ear-to-mouth prayer. The value is that we are not praying in isolation. There is cooperation and accountability.
• Against opposition--When we participate in prayerwalking, we often walk outside of our comfort zone and into enemy territory. There are some things that we do that do not bother Satan very much. Evangelism bothers Satan. Missions bothers Satan. Praying on his turf, especially for the salvation of his people, bothers Satan. When Satan is bothered, he attacks. Thus, prayerwalking often becomes spiritual warfare. We go into prayerwalking with our spiritual armor on. We do not pray it on each morning, for that would mean we took it off the night before, and Satan loves to attack in the night watches. We affirm our armor new each day and we acknowledge that the weapons of this warfare are not carnal but spiritual. We follow the biblical instruction and we “resist the devil.” We do not press the enemy, we praise the victor.
• For glorification--If one participates in prayerwalking for any reason other than the glorification of God, they are participating for the wrong reason. Our purpose is that God might be glorified among the nations.

Dan, please write a prayer we can pray with you that stresses the inward, outward and forward focus of a praying disciple . . .
In addition to my seminary teaching, I lead numerous seminars/workshops on prayer and many of these are specifically on prayerwalking. At the conclusion of the prayerwalking training, I always close with this prayer. It applies equally to prayer of any kind.

God would You be glorified, against our opposition, in the midst of our cooperation, with our new information, on our location, through our intercession. Amen.